Angel with the Sword, page 22
part #1 of Merovingen Series
She cast a look back, at her skip riding quiet in the dark, like any skip at night-tie. Another hitch higher on the shingles. Another shingle slipped and slid and hit the water with a splash.
Lord, no, no, Rahman, that ain't no signal, don't go for that door.
Climb, you got to hurry, fool!
Breath came hard. She edged up and up and felt the whole building protest.
Don't leave your weight on that rooftree one second longer'n need be, and what you going to do with the damn gun, Altair?
Her mother's voice. Retribution perched up on the tim here, in the big black fork of them where they held tottering Megary's upper section apart.
Blow my damn gut out, mama.
She stuffed her sweater into her pants and tightened her belt till it hurt, pulled her sweater collar wide and stuffed the gun down her front. Then she rose up on her knees, scrambling for that timber with both arms as the shed trembled under her departing feet.
She swung up, hung upside down by arms and legs, edged along and felt the gun slide slowly off her stomach and plunk down into her sweater at the back. Damn. Oh, damn. It swung there.
How'm I going to get rightside up?
You damn well do it, Altair.
Thanks, mama, thanks.
She edged higher with one heel and a knee. The gun swung over farther against her back. The sprained finger shot fire and she lost her vision for a moment, sucked wind as she hung in the old position again.
Won't work. O Lord, I can't hold on, my arms are going to go.
She crept closer to the balcony. Banged her head against the boards where thinner supports were nailed in afterthought.
She transferred one grip to a brace-board. It seemed solid. She risked the lame hand, hooked that elbow around the board, sucked more air and let go the timber with her feet.
Strained arms wrenched under her whole weight. She pulled and pulled and got the other elbow hooked around a brace. Higher, then. She snatched another hold with the right forearm and got a knee onto a board while the gun dragged at the back of her sweater and the damn pry-bar caught on a board.
Another push upward. A nail creaked. She got the second foot on a brace, hooked her left foot up onto the timber again and climbed and inched with her whole mid-section arched up and trembling over nothing.
And a cascade of objects left her pocket and thunked and splashed into water down below.
Oh, damn, damn, no, Rahman, that ain't it either, don't you move—
She hung there gasping. A last flurry of changed handholds and elbow-hooks, one small brace to the next, and she ended up with her head higher than her feet this time and one foot in agony, wedged in the vee of two brace-boards.
She stood on it, grabbed the corner-brace of the balcony and found the next footing. The whole rail wobbled when she touched it. She set her foot carefully sideways on the rim of the balcony outside the rail, used the rail for balance with her weight square-down on it, and snatched a hold with her good hand on the chain that anchored the balcony from the main building face.
O God.
Her knees wobbled worse than the rail. Her legs wanted to go out from under her. She swung a leg over the rail and onto solid planking, clung to the chain with arms gone almost limp and dragged the other leg over the shaky railing. A row of shutters showed light along the balcony, a door shed a little glow from the bottom out onto weathered boards. The whole balcony had a precarious, twisted look, tilted toward the canal, slung by chains from the roof overhang. Wind whistled round the corner. And the cloud-mass showed above Amparo roof, closer and ominous with lightnings.
She leaned out from the corner. The end of the skip was visible. Still there. She gulped air and fished the gun around under the sweater until she could pull the sweater loose by main force and get the gun out. Her hands trembled with fatigue; she needed both to support the weight of the pistol. Her brain reeled this way and that in blind panic.
Door, fool! Try the door.
She edged back on the rickety balcony to the brick of the face, clenched the gun in both hands and padded over to the door, put an ear to the paint-peeling wood and heard male voices. Heard a sound then that sounded like something else. It turned into a moan that sent ice through her nerves.
Damn 'em, damn 'em. Her heart spasmed. Her hands shook as she gripped the gun in the right and tried the latch ever so softly.
Locked.
But they're here. They're damn well in there, the Sword and all, with that fancy boat down to the dock. That ain't nothing Megary owns. You got a chance. Think, Jones, get your brain to work and shake the trembles out, who's going to save him else?
Careful steps, one and another down the balcony that girded Megary's topmost level.
Creak.
She recovered her pulsebeat and made the next step, walked closer to the brick, where the boards were firmer underfoot, as far as the first shuttered window and a crack that let light out.
Men inside. Moving figures in that little sliver of vision the crack afforded. A body passed right in front of the window and she ducked down a moment, holding her breath.
Then a voice shrilled out on the canal below the balcony: "Who you be? Who you be?"
God, it's Muggin!
Steps crossed the room inside. "Leave that alone," somebody said, somebody with a hightown voice, "Don't show a light."
"It's just some canaler ruckus—" Another. While her heart beat and beat against her ribs.
From below: "What you doing sneaking round here? Ain't up to no good, I seen you, Ali! I seen you too, Tommy-boy! Where you get that there skip?"
More steps. A door opened and shut somewhere to the right in the room.
O Lord, if they're coming out here—Where's that wall end? O if I'd holed them boats down there first, if I'd drained them tanks-She looked frantically for a hiding-spot. There was none, Even the door itself opened inward. She clutched the gun and aimed toward the door, hands shaking.
Quiet from below then. The slap of water.
More quiet.
It's gone askew, it's all gone askew, Rahman ain't going to get that back door open now, I got no help coming, I should've done for them boats. O Lord, maybe Rahman c'n do something. Maybe he'll think of it.
What can he do? He's got Muggin.
Water splashed, the gentle sound of a pole at work through the thunder of wind and loose shingles.
"Well, I'm sorry!" Muggin's voice drifted up.
She put her ear to the shutter. The voices inside came fainter now.
"—find out. —Megary will see to it. —harbor. —aren't going to get anything—"
Thunder muttered from the clouds, nearer than it had been.
Where is he, dammit, is Mondragon even in there? I daren't look, man's probably looking out that crack, I'll go eyeball to eyeball with 'im if I go in front of that shutter.
"—forget it," someone said. "—storm moving in—out there—tide—"
"—through the harbor—"
Another voice.
"—damned—"
A sudden outcry, quickly muffled. A groan.
She clenched her hand on the gun.
"Yo!" came from far below. And there was hammering, fist on distant door. "It's Ali, dammit, let me in! I got news—"
"—What's that?" From inside.
"Damn. What are they doing out there?" From near the door.
"You'd better go down and see."
A door opened and slammed. The hammering kept up at the freight-door.
O Lord and Glory, Rahman's give me the best he can.
She ducked under the first window, headed for the next and straightened up slowly, drawing her knife left-handed. She spotted the latch, shadow across the slit, put her eye to the crack to be sure. Big vault of a room, plaster walls, a door, scant furniture. Three men moving about. She shifted her vantage, got sight of a brick wall, of—
—Mondragon slumped there on the floor, just lying. One of the others kicked him in the gut and he curled tighter to protect himself, blond head tucked in chained arms.
She swallowed hard. Sucked several breaths like preparing for a deep dive. Think. Think, Jones. Get the blood moving. Her hand sweated on the gunbutt and her eye went on scanning, cold now, quick and all-inclusive, while thunder muttered up in the clouds.
Man by those shutters. And a bright brass lock and bolt on that shut door.
She slipped the thin knife into the shutter-slit, lifted, caught the wood with the knife-tip and pulled it outward.
Damn 'em.
She flung the shutter open on dirty glass and a shut window, opened fire right through it, and the first man dropped on the second shot. The second man ran for the door and the third, uptown-dressed, dived for cover behind a couch.
She dropped him, shot at the second and leaned through the shattered window for a shot at the fourth. Winged him. He spun with the shot and she shot again. Man-two got the door open and made it out as she raked glass from the window and threw a leg in, winced at a cut and hopped to both feet inside. She stumbled once, found her balance on one foot and ran.
She hit the door bodily, snapped the lock shut and shot the bolt.
"Jones!" Mondragon screamed.
She spun about, saw the man on his knees behind the couch; and blasted him over backwards.
Five, is that five bullets? No, six, dammit! She snatched at pockets, felt them desperately.
Nothing. Not a shell left. She flung herself to her knees by Mondragon as he dragged himself up agaist the bricks. His white face was all sweat-beaded and stained from a cut on his forehead. His hair was plastered against his temples and bloodstain spread through the sweat. "Jones," he said—Steps came thundering up the stairs inside. He grabbed with manacled hands at the collar-chain, jerked at it frantically where it connected to the brickwork. "Jones—shoot the damn chain!''
"I'm out!" She dropped gun and knife, jerked at the pry-bar at her belt, working it loose as blows hit the door. "I got this."
"Oh, damn, damn—give it to me, get out that window—"
"Shoot the lock!" someone yelled outside.
"Jones, get out of here! You can't help me!"
"Damned if I can't." She got the pry-bar free of her belt and jammed the hook-end under the edge of the chain-bracket while shots splintered away at the solid door.
"God," Mondragon said and twisted round on his knees to get his own hands on the bar, threw all his strength into it till the veins stood out and his face turned dark.
Bolts squealed loose from the mortar, one and two. The other two loosened. Blows hit the door again. More shots outside, deafening. She put her weight with his and the bracket flew free, pins and all.
"Come on!" She grabbed up the gun and sheathed the knife. "F' God's sake, get up!—" She pulled at him. He staggered up, reeled and kept his feet. "Come on!"
He was behind her when she got to the door. She fumbled desperately with the latch and lock. Behind them the inside door was giving way, crack after crack of wood splintering under repeated battering.
The door stuck in the frame. She jerked and it came free. "Jump," she yelled on her way to the rail.
And tried to vault it. The whole rail cracked and gave way, spilling her outward.
She yelled in shock at the rush of dark air, tried to compose herself for the landing, and went into the water somewhere toward rump-first, water driven up her nose in the tumble, her wits nearly knocked from her as another large impact whumped into the water.
They'll be on us, they'll have us in the water, they got guns up there—
Is he swimming? That chain could've knocked him cold, broke his neck, o Lord! Mondragon—
She hit the canal bottom on her back, righted herself and kicked off the mucky bottom for the surface. Her head broke clear of the water—she sucked a foul breath, spat Det-water and stared wildly at the side of a skip, at a ragged-canopied skip bobbing there in front of her. Mondragon broke to surface, lost it again. A hook came out in the hands of a raggedy figure on the skip-deck and snagged him by the sweater, hauling him up to air.
"Dammit!" Jones choked, spitting water.
"Damn near hit my boat," old Muggin yelled in his cracked voice. "Ye damn fools!"
An engine coughed from off in the dark. Coughed again. A third time. Took. And fire flared up across the water, off the walls, off Muggin's ragged canopy, flinging his features into demonic highlights.
She kicked and turned as a skip bore down on them under power, and Tommy was there in the bow trying to find them.
Explosions. Shots kicked up little plumes in the firelit water.
"Jones!" Tommy was yelling, waving one hand wildly as the bow came up toward her head and she kicked desperately out of the way, clawed her way up Muggin's side and got a hold on that rim as her own skip rode close, throttled back. "Mondragon—Damn, let him go, Muggin!"
Muggin shoved hook and Mondragon down, and Mondragon flailed out desperately with chained hands, turned and caught her skip in one wild lunge. She flung the gun aboard in a sweep of water, hurled herself for her skip rim. "Help him!" she screamed at Tommy, who abandoned Mondragon to sink. "Damn ye, help him, he'll go under the damn bow!" She bounced underwater, hurled herself up and got her arms over the side with the last of her strength as the skip started to move. A shot slammed into the well. Another kicked up water beyond. Tommy got
Mondragon in and Rahman put the throttle in full.
"Tom-mm-my!" Altair yelled, holding by bom arms over the rim. Water dragged harder and harder at her legs.
Her arms bruised themselves on the rim and muscle-strength faded. "Tommy, dammit!"
A shadow loomed up. Someone grabbed her sweater in the middle of the back, hauled, grabbed the seat of her pants and slipped her up and over the rim in a sprawl of his limbs and hers.
She clambered over the body, heard a grunt of pain, caught a firelit impression of All's sweating face as the skip sped around the comer of Amparo west. ''Boats!" she screamed at Ali as they rounded the turn. "Boats, dammit—go round again!" And in the protected interval as they raced behind Amparo: "Mondragon," she gasped, scrambling over the well-slats, where he lay sprawled on his face. "Mondragon—"
He moved. He got up on his hands and she scrambled aft again to get to the firebomb. Behind Amparo, echoing off the dike, another engine roared to life; one, and a second.
"Rahman!" She looked up where Rahman crouched by the tiller, hanging on for all he was worth. "They're going to cut us off!"
"Yey," Rahman yelled. The throttle was already in full.
"Get the damn chain off," Mondragon was saying. "Get the chain—"
"Ax." Wits came back. She abandoned the move for the bomb and dived instead for the ax at the edge of the well, laid hand on it and scrambled over the slats where Mondragon had positioned himself, manacled hands on either side of the boat-rim. Ali took the ax from her, brought it down with one great whack that parted the links and drove into the wood.
Amparo's brick-and-shutters gave way suddenly to West Canal, to a fancy boat roaring down on them broadside.
"Deck!" she yelped, and hit it in a tangle with Mondragon and Ali as shots whined over the side. Rahman gave a strangled sound, and the tiller swung over. "Rahman? Rahman!"
"Deck!" Rahman yelled hoarsely, and the high walls of
Southdike swung front of them, the sea-gate and the Old Harbor in the lightning-flicker. ' 'Damn, she' ll bottom!''
"Seawind!" Rahman yelled, naming his bet, and Altair hit the deck on her face, clung to the slats waiting for the shock to take the skip apart.
The engine roared off the dike, and sound receded into clear space.
She put her head up and saw harbor around them, the Dead Wharf, the chop of shallow water ahead in a moment of lightning-flash.
Ghost Fleet shallows. She scrambled to her knees and saw Rahman slumped on the tiller, the skip skewing wild. "Jones!" Mondragon yelled as she clawed her way up onto the deck. She looked, grabbed the tiller under Rahman's failing arm, wrenched the bar over as a black wall loomed up where none had a right to be. She slewed it, passed between high-prowed fisher-boat and its anchor-cable; and shots spanged and splintered off the stern, engine sound still behind them. Light flared. More shots. She got as low behind the engine box as she could, swung wild, over to the shallows, and veered off them—veered off where the wind-borne smell of dead weed and the drifting hulks of rafters warned her of shallower and shallower water. A bigger engine thumped to life. "It's that fisher!" Ali yelled. "That's the slaver! Get away from it, get out of here!"
"I'm trying! Tommy, get a rag in that damn leak, we got drag!" Beside her, Rahman moved, tried to help, slumped down again. A rafter loomed up, spiny with hooks. Wild cries hooted through the night. Crazies, it's crazies!
Rahman moved again, got to the side of the deck, strobed in lightning. "Get back!" she yelled as shots popped behind them. Dead Wharf was off portside. She shoved the throttle for any last fraction she could get out of it, swung the tiller and saw what Rahman was after. Ali had seen and crawled up there. The last bottle. Fuel-smell came over the wind and the rot.
"Get down!" she yelled at them. "Get down in the well—"
As the engine gave a fuel-out cough and died.
"What happened?" Tommy yelled. "What happened?"
They kept gliding, wind-battered, tossed by the chop. She got to her knees and tried the prime, hurled the crank over. Dry cough. Again.
O God.
"Gimme my gun!" she yelled. "Tommy! My gun! In the well!"
Shells in the drop. She flung the lid up and groped for the heavy little box among the rags, cast a look at the boats coming up fast, at the crazies closing on them from one side and the big shadow of the fisher coming up from behind.
It was Mondragon came up with the gun, came clattering onto the half deck at a slithering crawl, chain trailing. "Sword's in the hidey," she said. "I brung it—"
He shoved the gun at her and scrambled down into the well again backward. She broke the chamber and began to load, precisely, hands a-tremble and way falling off the skip by the second. She kept the bow to the waves, kept gaining what she could. No more shots back there. They knew their prey was slowing, knew that engine had to be dead.
Lord, no, no, Rahman, that ain't no signal, don't go for that door.
Climb, you got to hurry, fool!
Breath came hard. She edged up and up and felt the whole building protest.
Don't leave your weight on that rooftree one second longer'n need be, and what you going to do with the damn gun, Altair?
Her mother's voice. Retribution perched up on the tim here, in the big black fork of them where they held tottering Megary's upper section apart.
Blow my damn gut out, mama.
She stuffed her sweater into her pants and tightened her belt till it hurt, pulled her sweater collar wide and stuffed the gun down her front. Then she rose up on her knees, scrambling for that timber with both arms as the shed trembled under her departing feet.
She swung up, hung upside down by arms and legs, edged along and felt the gun slide slowly off her stomach and plunk down into her sweater at the back. Damn. Oh, damn. It swung there.
How'm I going to get rightside up?
You damn well do it, Altair.
Thanks, mama, thanks.
She edged higher with one heel and a knee. The gun swung over farther against her back. The sprained finger shot fire and she lost her vision for a moment, sucked wind as she hung in the old position again.
Won't work. O Lord, I can't hold on, my arms are going to go.
She crept closer to the balcony. Banged her head against the boards where thinner supports were nailed in afterthought.
She transferred one grip to a brace-board. It seemed solid. She risked the lame hand, hooked that elbow around the board, sucked more air and let go the timber with her feet.
Strained arms wrenched under her whole weight. She pulled and pulled and got the other elbow hooked around a brace. Higher, then. She snatched another hold with the right forearm and got a knee onto a board while the gun dragged at the back of her sweater and the damn pry-bar caught on a board.
Another push upward. A nail creaked. She got the second foot on a brace, hooked her left foot up onto the timber again and climbed and inched with her whole mid-section arched up and trembling over nothing.
And a cascade of objects left her pocket and thunked and splashed into water down below.
Oh, damn, damn, no, Rahman, that ain't it either, don't you move—
She hung there gasping. A last flurry of changed handholds and elbow-hooks, one small brace to the next, and she ended up with her head higher than her feet this time and one foot in agony, wedged in the vee of two brace-boards.
She stood on it, grabbed the corner-brace of the balcony and found the next footing. The whole rail wobbled when she touched it. She set her foot carefully sideways on the rim of the balcony outside the rail, used the rail for balance with her weight square-down on it, and snatched a hold with her good hand on the chain that anchored the balcony from the main building face.
O God.
Her knees wobbled worse than the rail. Her legs wanted to go out from under her. She swung a leg over the rail and onto solid planking, clung to the chain with arms gone almost limp and dragged the other leg over the shaky railing. A row of shutters showed light along the balcony, a door shed a little glow from the bottom out onto weathered boards. The whole balcony had a precarious, twisted look, tilted toward the canal, slung by chains from the roof overhang. Wind whistled round the corner. And the cloud-mass showed above Amparo roof, closer and ominous with lightnings.
She leaned out from the corner. The end of the skip was visible. Still there. She gulped air and fished the gun around under the sweater until she could pull the sweater loose by main force and get the gun out. Her hands trembled with fatigue; she needed both to support the weight of the pistol. Her brain reeled this way and that in blind panic.
Door, fool! Try the door.
She edged back on the rickety balcony to the brick of the face, clenched the gun in both hands and padded over to the door, put an ear to the paint-peeling wood and heard male voices. Heard a sound then that sounded like something else. It turned into a moan that sent ice through her nerves.
Damn 'em, damn 'em. Her heart spasmed. Her hands shook as she gripped the gun in the right and tried the latch ever so softly.
Locked.
But they're here. They're damn well in there, the Sword and all, with that fancy boat down to the dock. That ain't nothing Megary owns. You got a chance. Think, Jones, get your brain to work and shake the trembles out, who's going to save him else?
Careful steps, one and another down the balcony that girded Megary's topmost level.
Creak.
She recovered her pulsebeat and made the next step, walked closer to the brick, where the boards were firmer underfoot, as far as the first shuttered window and a crack that let light out.
Men inside. Moving figures in that little sliver of vision the crack afforded. A body passed right in front of the window and she ducked down a moment, holding her breath.
Then a voice shrilled out on the canal below the balcony: "Who you be? Who you be?"
God, it's Muggin!
Steps crossed the room inside. "Leave that alone," somebody said, somebody with a hightown voice, "Don't show a light."
"It's just some canaler ruckus—" Another. While her heart beat and beat against her ribs.
From below: "What you doing sneaking round here? Ain't up to no good, I seen you, Ali! I seen you too, Tommy-boy! Where you get that there skip?"
More steps. A door opened and shut somewhere to the right in the room.
O Lord, if they're coming out here—Where's that wall end? O if I'd holed them boats down there first, if I'd drained them tanks-She looked frantically for a hiding-spot. There was none, Even the door itself opened inward. She clutched the gun and aimed toward the door, hands shaking.
Quiet from below then. The slap of water.
More quiet.
It's gone askew, it's all gone askew, Rahman ain't going to get that back door open now, I got no help coming, I should've done for them boats. O Lord, maybe Rahman c'n do something. Maybe he'll think of it.
What can he do? He's got Muggin.
Water splashed, the gentle sound of a pole at work through the thunder of wind and loose shingles.
"Well, I'm sorry!" Muggin's voice drifted up.
She put her ear to the shutter. The voices inside came fainter now.
"—find out. —Megary will see to it. —harbor. —aren't going to get anything—"
Thunder muttered from the clouds, nearer than it had been.
Where is he, dammit, is Mondragon even in there? I daren't look, man's probably looking out that crack, I'll go eyeball to eyeball with 'im if I go in front of that shutter.
"—forget it," someone said. "—storm moving in—out there—tide—"
"—through the harbor—"
Another voice.
"—damned—"
A sudden outcry, quickly muffled. A groan.
She clenched her hand on the gun.
"Yo!" came from far below. And there was hammering, fist on distant door. "It's Ali, dammit, let me in! I got news—"
"—What's that?" From inside.
"Damn. What are they doing out there?" From near the door.
"You'd better go down and see."
A door opened and slammed. The hammering kept up at the freight-door.
O Lord and Glory, Rahman's give me the best he can.
She ducked under the first window, headed for the next and straightened up slowly, drawing her knife left-handed. She spotted the latch, shadow across the slit, put her eye to the crack to be sure. Big vault of a room, plaster walls, a door, scant furniture. Three men moving about. She shifted her vantage, got sight of a brick wall, of—
—Mondragon slumped there on the floor, just lying. One of the others kicked him in the gut and he curled tighter to protect himself, blond head tucked in chained arms.
She swallowed hard. Sucked several breaths like preparing for a deep dive. Think. Think, Jones. Get the blood moving. Her hand sweated on the gunbutt and her eye went on scanning, cold now, quick and all-inclusive, while thunder muttered up in the clouds.
Man by those shutters. And a bright brass lock and bolt on that shut door.
She slipped the thin knife into the shutter-slit, lifted, caught the wood with the knife-tip and pulled it outward.
Damn 'em.
She flung the shutter open on dirty glass and a shut window, opened fire right through it, and the first man dropped on the second shot. The second man ran for the door and the third, uptown-dressed, dived for cover behind a couch.
She dropped him, shot at the second and leaned through the shattered window for a shot at the fourth. Winged him. He spun with the shot and she shot again. Man-two got the door open and made it out as she raked glass from the window and threw a leg in, winced at a cut and hopped to both feet inside. She stumbled once, found her balance on one foot and ran.
She hit the door bodily, snapped the lock shut and shot the bolt.
"Jones!" Mondragon screamed.
She spun about, saw the man on his knees behind the couch; and blasted him over backwards.
Five, is that five bullets? No, six, dammit! She snatched at pockets, felt them desperately.
Nothing. Not a shell left. She flung herself to her knees by Mondragon as he dragged himself up agaist the bricks. His white face was all sweat-beaded and stained from a cut on his forehead. His hair was plastered against his temples and bloodstain spread through the sweat. "Jones," he said—Steps came thundering up the stairs inside. He grabbed with manacled hands at the collar-chain, jerked at it frantically where it connected to the brickwork. "Jones—shoot the damn chain!''
"I'm out!" She dropped gun and knife, jerked at the pry-bar at her belt, working it loose as blows hit the door. "I got this."
"Oh, damn, damn—give it to me, get out that window—"
"Shoot the lock!" someone yelled outside.
"Jones, get out of here! You can't help me!"
"Damned if I can't." She got the pry-bar free of her belt and jammed the hook-end under the edge of the chain-bracket while shots splintered away at the solid door.
"God," Mondragon said and twisted round on his knees to get his own hands on the bar, threw all his strength into it till the veins stood out and his face turned dark.
Bolts squealed loose from the mortar, one and two. The other two loosened. Blows hit the door again. More shots outside, deafening. She put her weight with his and the bracket flew free, pins and all.
"Come on!" She grabbed up the gun and sheathed the knife. "F' God's sake, get up!—" She pulled at him. He staggered up, reeled and kept his feet. "Come on!"
He was behind her when she got to the door. She fumbled desperately with the latch and lock. Behind them the inside door was giving way, crack after crack of wood splintering under repeated battering.
The door stuck in the frame. She jerked and it came free. "Jump," she yelled on her way to the rail.
And tried to vault it. The whole rail cracked and gave way, spilling her outward.
She yelled in shock at the rush of dark air, tried to compose herself for the landing, and went into the water somewhere toward rump-first, water driven up her nose in the tumble, her wits nearly knocked from her as another large impact whumped into the water.
They'll be on us, they'll have us in the water, they got guns up there—
Is he swimming? That chain could've knocked him cold, broke his neck, o Lord! Mondragon—
She hit the canal bottom on her back, righted herself and kicked off the mucky bottom for the surface. Her head broke clear of the water—she sucked a foul breath, spat Det-water and stared wildly at the side of a skip, at a ragged-canopied skip bobbing there in front of her. Mondragon broke to surface, lost it again. A hook came out in the hands of a raggedy figure on the skip-deck and snagged him by the sweater, hauling him up to air.
"Dammit!" Jones choked, spitting water.
"Damn near hit my boat," old Muggin yelled in his cracked voice. "Ye damn fools!"
An engine coughed from off in the dark. Coughed again. A third time. Took. And fire flared up across the water, off the walls, off Muggin's ragged canopy, flinging his features into demonic highlights.
She kicked and turned as a skip bore down on them under power, and Tommy was there in the bow trying to find them.
Explosions. Shots kicked up little plumes in the firelit water.
"Jones!" Tommy was yelling, waving one hand wildly as the bow came up toward her head and she kicked desperately out of the way, clawed her way up Muggin's side and got a hold on that rim as her own skip rode close, throttled back. "Mondragon—Damn, let him go, Muggin!"
Muggin shoved hook and Mondragon down, and Mondragon flailed out desperately with chained hands, turned and caught her skip in one wild lunge. She flung the gun aboard in a sweep of water, hurled herself for her skip rim. "Help him!" she screamed at Tommy, who abandoned Mondragon to sink. "Damn ye, help him, he'll go under the damn bow!" She bounced underwater, hurled herself up and got her arms over the side with the last of her strength as the skip started to move. A shot slammed into the well. Another kicked up water beyond. Tommy got
Mondragon in and Rahman put the throttle in full.
"Tom-mm-my!" Altair yelled, holding by bom arms over the rim. Water dragged harder and harder at her legs.
Her arms bruised themselves on the rim and muscle-strength faded. "Tommy, dammit!"
A shadow loomed up. Someone grabbed her sweater in the middle of the back, hauled, grabbed the seat of her pants and slipped her up and over the rim in a sprawl of his limbs and hers.
She clambered over the body, heard a grunt of pain, caught a firelit impression of All's sweating face as the skip sped around the comer of Amparo west. ''Boats!" she screamed at Ali as they rounded the turn. "Boats, dammit—go round again!" And in the protected interval as they raced behind Amparo: "Mondragon," she gasped, scrambling over the well-slats, where he lay sprawled on his face. "Mondragon—"
He moved. He got up on his hands and she scrambled aft again to get to the firebomb. Behind Amparo, echoing off the dike, another engine roared to life; one, and a second.
"Rahman!" She looked up where Rahman crouched by the tiller, hanging on for all he was worth. "They're going to cut us off!"
"Yey," Rahman yelled. The throttle was already in full.
"Get the damn chain off," Mondragon was saying. "Get the chain—"
"Ax." Wits came back. She abandoned the move for the bomb and dived instead for the ax at the edge of the well, laid hand on it and scrambled over the slats where Mondragon had positioned himself, manacled hands on either side of the boat-rim. Ali took the ax from her, brought it down with one great whack that parted the links and drove into the wood.
Amparo's brick-and-shutters gave way suddenly to West Canal, to a fancy boat roaring down on them broadside.
"Deck!" she yelped, and hit it in a tangle with Mondragon and Ali as shots whined over the side. Rahman gave a strangled sound, and the tiller swung over. "Rahman? Rahman!"
"Deck!" Rahman yelled hoarsely, and the high walls of
Southdike swung front of them, the sea-gate and the Old Harbor in the lightning-flicker. ' 'Damn, she' ll bottom!''
"Seawind!" Rahman yelled, naming his bet, and Altair hit the deck on her face, clung to the slats waiting for the shock to take the skip apart.
The engine roared off the dike, and sound receded into clear space.
She put her head up and saw harbor around them, the Dead Wharf, the chop of shallow water ahead in a moment of lightning-flash.
Ghost Fleet shallows. She scrambled to her knees and saw Rahman slumped on the tiller, the skip skewing wild. "Jones!" Mondragon yelled as she clawed her way up onto the deck. She looked, grabbed the tiller under Rahman's failing arm, wrenched the bar over as a black wall loomed up where none had a right to be. She slewed it, passed between high-prowed fisher-boat and its anchor-cable; and shots spanged and splintered off the stern, engine sound still behind them. Light flared. More shots. She got as low behind the engine box as she could, swung wild, over to the shallows, and veered off them—veered off where the wind-borne smell of dead weed and the drifting hulks of rafters warned her of shallower and shallower water. A bigger engine thumped to life. "It's that fisher!" Ali yelled. "That's the slaver! Get away from it, get out of here!"
"I'm trying! Tommy, get a rag in that damn leak, we got drag!" Beside her, Rahman moved, tried to help, slumped down again. A rafter loomed up, spiny with hooks. Wild cries hooted through the night. Crazies, it's crazies!
Rahman moved again, got to the side of the deck, strobed in lightning. "Get back!" she yelled as shots popped behind them. Dead Wharf was off portside. She shoved the throttle for any last fraction she could get out of it, swung the tiller and saw what Rahman was after. Ali had seen and crawled up there. The last bottle. Fuel-smell came over the wind and the rot.
"Get down!" she yelled at them. "Get down in the well—"
As the engine gave a fuel-out cough and died.
"What happened?" Tommy yelled. "What happened?"
They kept gliding, wind-battered, tossed by the chop. She got to her knees and tried the prime, hurled the crank over. Dry cough. Again.
O God.
"Gimme my gun!" she yelled. "Tommy! My gun! In the well!"
Shells in the drop. She flung the lid up and groped for the heavy little box among the rags, cast a look at the boats coming up fast, at the crazies closing on them from one side and the big shadow of the fisher coming up from behind.
It was Mondragon came up with the gun, came clattering onto the half deck at a slithering crawl, chain trailing. "Sword's in the hidey," she said. "I brung it—"
He shoved the gun at her and scrambled down into the well again backward. She broke the chamber and began to load, precisely, hands a-tremble and way falling off the skip by the second. She kept the bow to the waves, kept gaining what she could. No more shots back there. They knew their prey was slowing, knew that engine had to be dead.
